Page 15 of The Bane Witch

15

Conclave

I am surrounded by women far deadlier than I, women whose understanding and experience of our gifts outweigh my own. They have a history, an unspoken accord, that binds them together. I see it in the way they look at one another, the heavy glances, the tiny gestures of brows and lips and hands. In their posture and proximity, the easy way they move around one another. The careful way they move around me.

It is clear—they belong; I do not.

I sit rigid in the dining chair Myrtle has provided as they circle with their own chairs, aware that I am in the hot seat, completely out of my depth. Aunt Myrtle speaks first.

“Piers came to me of her own accord,” she begins. “Drawn by something we all share, clutching the memory of our meeting more than twenty years ago.”

“Does that matter?” Scarlet’s mother, Barbie, asks before Myrtle has barely taken a breath to continue. Her dark hair is glossy straight, framing her face in long layers, causing her gray-green eyes to stand out in contrast. If she’s older than Azalea, it’s not by much. “She’s completely green, ignorant. And that’s dangerous for us, especially at her age. I know it’s not her fault, but I don’t see how that makes a difference. I have a daughter to protect.”

“We all have daughters to protect,” the second-oldest woman in the room says sharply. Her hair is gray fizz around her face, skin mottled with brown, but there is beauty there in the largeness of her eyes and the puckered bow of her mouth.

I notice the way Myrtle drops her head at the words, daughterless.

“Well, most of us,” the old woman amends.

Barbie looks put out by the interruption. “Thank you, Lattie. But your daughter is fifty-one, and hers is already twenty-two.” She nods to the two women I assume are Lattie’s daughter and granddaughter, respectively. “Scarlet is six.” She looks at me. “I thought the plan was to leave her be, observe from afar, and act in the interest of the venery should she malfunction. Isn’t that precisely what’s taken place? You said yourself, Myrtle, that her work was sloppy, amateur, lacking polish. There was a sheriff here just today asking questions. We can’t afford that kind of attention. She’s already put us at risk.”

The threat behind her words is unmistakable, sharp enough to rip a hole in the room, bleeding tension. I shiver to think what acting “in the interest of the venery” actually means. I’d like to defend myself, but she’s not wrong. I don’t know what I’m doing. And that can’t be good for anyone here, least of all me. And they aren’t even aware that I’ve done it three times already. Not once, like they’re arguing. Not even twice, as Myrtle knows. Three times. So it will happen again. It is only a matter of time. The question is, will I be ready? Can I be? Can I pull it off with the kind of grace they expect of me, and do I even want to?

“Malfunction?” Myrtle’s eyebrows crinkle symmetrically like an accordion bellows. “She’s not an android, Barbie. She’s a person.”

“She’s a witch,” the older woman in the pink slacks speaks up, the one who had been watching me with Regis. She rests a hand on Barbie’s shoulder. “A bane witch, no less. If she were just a person, we wouldn’t be having this discussion. And my daughter is right. The risk is too great. We let Lily’s sad story play out and it has done nothing but cost us. It’s time we end it.”

Myrtle whirls on her. “She’s one of us, Rose. She’s family.”

“Is she, though?” I turn to see Azalea has spoken from the other side of the circle. She cocks her pretty blond head and eyeballs me, her bright yellow dress swapped for a lean Missoni pencil skirt and a cropped tee that reads HATE BAIT . Her hair has been pulled into a high ponytail with a big, black bow over it. “I know she’s Lily’s daughter, but didn’t Lily make it clear she was out of the venery? I still don’t understand why we let her live after that,” she says casually, as if ending my mother’s life were as simple as returning a dress that doesn’t fit. “Might have saved ourselves a trip.”

A rush of heat rips through me, stealing my breath, and it takes a moment to register that it’s anger. I feel defensive for my mother, the very same woman who left me clueless. It’s so startling, I nearly topple from my chair. With effort, I force the feeling down. I cannot lose my cool when I am this outnumbered.

“With all due respect, Azalea,” Myrtle cuts in, “you were three at the time.”

Azalea shrugs nonchalantly and proceeds to slurp her Coke through a metal straw. If I don’t make it out of here, I realize, she will fly back to her life of indie fashion labels and cold brew on the West Coast as if I never existed, relieved to have one less responsibility to think about. It’s a chilling thought.

“She’s right,” someone says. I turn my head and take in the redhead in her forties, the soft turtleneck she wears, the delicate curve of her ear, the cut of hazel eyes so like mine in shape and size that I cringe when I see them.

“Thank you, Misty,” Aunt Myrtle says, visibly relieved to have someone’s support.

“No.” Misty smiles sweetly. “I meant that Azalea is right. Lily renounced the venery. She renounced her family. She renounced her powers. She renounced our lifestyle. Everything that makes us who we are, keeps us safe. She didn’t deserve our mercy, but we gave it to her anyway. I’m not inclined to do so again.”

Myrtle frowns. “Lily was… a disappointment to be sure. But she never actually put us in harm’s way. We had no reason to move against her.”

“ No reason?” The woman, Rose, is purpling under her collar. “We had every reason. Thirteen in this room tonight if I’m counting right. She was a wild card, uncalculated, unpredictable, a bomb that needed to be disarmed before she detonated. If we wait for the explosion, the damage is done.”

Barbie’s fingers toy with the green enamel locket on a long gold chain around her neck. I wonder what she keeps inside, probably nothing good. “Hasn’t Lily put us in harm’s way by leaving her daughter untrained, undefended in the world? Effectively and literally dumping her on our doorstep thirty years too late with a badly botched mark and a nosy cop sniffing around?”

“If we had delivered the last kiss, then it would have been preemptive. Premeditated, even. We don’t kill innocents. I thought we settled this twenty years ago,” Myrtle argues with exasperation, twisting in her seat.

“It would have been protective,” Rose counters. “If you recall, several of us were opposed to your pleas for mercy at the time.”

“And clearly still are,” Myrtle shoots acerbically. She shakes her head, as if she’s been stung. “We’re arguing over something that is already done. Lily kept her word to the venery. When the relationship was no longer sustainable, she ended it. For good. She saw to his dispatch herself, and it shattered her. She knew it would, and she did it anyway. For all her faults, she was loyal in the end.”

My mind reels at this morsel of new information about my mother and her death. It sits bitter on the back of my tongue. I assume they are talking about Gerald—her sole relationship for most of my life, implying that she killed him. But I can’t imagine it. Can’t envision all her years of misguided devotion to that selfish buffoon spilling out across the linoleum in a tide of excrement and vomit, the grisly issue of a well-timed kiss, a drop of sweat in his coffee, her lips around the neck of his beer bottle. But Myrtle’s words ring with truth; it would have shattered her to do so. And suddenly, her suicide is coming into sickening focus. I grip the seat beneath me until my knuckles whiten.

“Yeah, and took herself out in the process,” the only teenager in the group says. When everyone gawks at her, she tries to clarify. “I mean, she did kill herself. She basically did our job for us. That counts for something, right?”

Myrtle’s eyes slide to mine surreptitiously. I’m not supposed to know these things. Not yet. This conclave is revealing as much about the venery to me as it is about me to the venery.

I see Rose scowl at the teenager and the resemblance is suddenly undeniable—same long nose and small chin, same murky green eyes. This girl must be her daughter as well. “What Olea means to say is that Lily’s betrayal did cost us. It cost us her, a powerful witch with a gift that might have strengthened our line, that might have ended dozens of marked lives and saved countless others. And here we are, still trying to clean up her mess after all these years.”

She looks me in the eye then. Defiant, I hold her gaze, refusing to be cowed by these women discussing my mother’s suicide like a political debate. Her lips curl on one side as she regards me before finally looking away.

“Lily was weak,” Great-Grandaunt Bella finally interjects, Rowena nestled at her feet, quiet and still except for the occasional head bob. “Like her mother. A reality that confounded my sister all the way to her grave. In many ways, we can lay the blame for Lily’s poor choices at Angel’s feet. But with both dead, it hardly seems a fruitful road to tread.”

Aunt Myrtle cocks a haughty I told you so brow at everyone. But Bella quickly checks her.

“Still, it cannot be overlooked that Piers is Lily’s child, who was Angel’s—a line that has proven itself to be tainted with malignant idealistic and romantic tendencies and an unchecked power that has demonstrated it is more blight than boon.” She reaches down to stroke Rowena’s feathered head. “If I were to take a vote now, where do you stand?”

Already? A quiver of concern lances through me.

She rises stiffly and settles her pouchy eyes over the room. “Those in favor of the last kiss for Lily’s line?”

Hands clot the air. Rose’s fingers jut out like iron railheads beside Barbie’s, glossy under the lights. Their faces are cinched as I take them in, tight around their suspicions. Nearly everyone has voted for me to die. My chest caves like a sinkhole, the bloated mass of Don flattening the grass beside his own sick imprinted on my mind, and the smell of the man in the café, tables crashing, the fear streaking their eyes in their final moments. The man from my childhood, his weight on my shoulder and his leering smile, the drop of his body like a tree falling. Is this how it will be for me? A flurry of bodily fluids and flapping limbs, my face contorted in disbelief, as my body gives way to the poison? Have they fed already? Will they do it now?

My eyes go to the door, calculating. I’m outnumbered, but some of them are old. Maybe I could smash through them like a wall. But even if I make it out, they’ll hunt me. And I’ve seen the way Myrtle’s eyes shape themselves to the dark. How long would I last before they found me? Would I even see morning?

“Those in favor of mercy?”

Myrtle’s hand is swift to rise and singular. Her eyes ring the room. “Oh, come on.”

Olea, blessed rebel, asks Bella, “Do I get a vote?”

“Of course,” the matriarch confirms.

Her hand barely lifts above her shoulder, a cheeky tilt to her head as she finds my eye. It is met with a whap to the back of her skull from her mother. She quickly lowers it.

“Azalea,” Bella creaks out like an old door in the rain. “You didn’t raise your hand.”

“I’m undecided,” she declares, as if she can’t be bothered to form an opinion one way or another. “Besides, it’s not a real vote.”

Not a real vote? I feel the air punch out of me, leaving my body loose and rubbery. Will I live then? Who decides?

Bella points at a woman in midlife with a streak of gray coursing through her ebony curls who we had yet to hear from. “Ivy, when did you take your first mark?”

Ivy looks surprised. She points at her color-blocked sweater. “Me?”

Bella’s eyes do not waver. “Did I stutter?”

“I was seventeen,” she quickly replies.

The old woman nods once. “And you, Azalea? You were younger than your mother, weren’t you?”

Azalea’s eyes sparkle with pride. “Fifteen,” she boasts.

Bella turns to Rose. “How about you, then? How old were you when you killed your first man?”

Rose doesn’t hesitate. “I was sixteen, Grandma Bella. So was Barbie.”

Bella smiles at her. Her eyes find Lattie next. “How old was Tina when she took her first?”

“Fifteen,” she says proudly.

“Yes,” Bella agrees. “I remember. You were sixteen, just like Rose and Barbie. And your sister, Donna, was fifteen. Isn’t that right, Donna?”

“It is, Mother,” she confirms. “And my third daughter, Misty, was sixteen.”

The old woman’s eyes narrow. She looks at me. “Olea took her first last year. And before we know it, Scarlet will be following in her footsteps. Verna, Tina’s daughter, bloomed at seventeen if I remember correctly, and, Myrtle, weren’t you only fourteen?”

“I was,” Myrtle admits.

“So young,” Bella comments. “Made my sister proud to see it. But Angel—she was the prodigy. Tell us how old your sister was when she took on the mantle of being a bane witch.”

Myrtle clears her throat. “Thirteen.”

Everyone gasps even though it is clear from their slack faces it’s not news to them.

“And poor Lily,” Bella finishes. “Your mother took her first mark at twelve,” she tells me. “It remains debatable if she was truly ready.”

What would they say if they knew my first victim died when I was barely five years old? So much younger than anyone here. My mother had her faults, but maybe she was right to put me on medication. How might I have turned out if I’d been allowed to go on killing, too young to comprehend what I was doing and why? My eyes meet Myrtle’s and the secret sparks between us. She will not tell them. She fears their reaction as much as I do.

I swallow the revulsion that has wadded itself in my throat. I belong to a family of murderers, proud murderers, who began killing as children. I don’t know how to reconcile this with the kindness Aunt Myrtle has shown me, the goodness I see in her every day. The way she helps Ed and tolerates Terry and Amos, the free bananas and bowls of soup she gives to anyone who wanders in off the street without money to buy their meal. Her community may be rough around the edges, but Myrtle is certainly one of its pillars, someone the residents of Crow Lake can count on. Even I have spared a life against the three I’ve taken. Certainly, to that man and his family, I am a hero. I am good. If he only knew the savage truth. My stomach turns inside my ribs, as if it can outmaneuver these contradictions.

Reaching down, Bella picks Rowena up and settles the chicken in her lap, stroking its head with a finger. Its papery eyelids close in response as she continues talking. “I took my first mark at almost twenty,” she says after a moment.

From the disks of their eyes, the wet, crater mouths, some of the younger women are surprised by this. They’ve not heard it before.

“Unspeakably belated for our kind,” Bella elaborates. “I was, quite literally, a late bloomer. But I still remember him well, his high-waisted pants and little vest, even the width of his red silk tie. It was the very start of the war. The venery had all but given up on me. The Golden Gate International Exposition had people flooding into San Francisco’s Treasure Island to commemorate the city’s now storied bridges. Men, in particular, came to ogle the female attractions, like burlesque dancer Sally Rand and her so-called Nude Ranch.”

She eyes each of us in turn before continuing. “I felt him coming three days on. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t eat. Couldn’t do anything except wander the sea-swept hills looking for the lavender flowers and purple berries that called to me like a lover in the dark. I fed until my ribs ached and my head burned. And then I slipped on my mother’s slinky green dress with the little buttons down the front, wandering the fair like a waif, trying to sift him from the throngs of horny, clownish men. They were all greedy, like half-starved children at a birthday buffet, but his fetor was laced with evil, the stink of a putrid wound. It called to me. It begged me to disinfect it.” She sighs as if remembering a passionate embrace.

“I thought I’d never find him. It must have taken me two whole days. But when I did, he was so eager, so ready to show me what he was truly capable of. I let him lead me away from the crowds into the isolated back alleys. I could still smell the last woman on him. She probably wasn’t more than fifteen. Certainly unwilling. Her fear clung to him, clouding the air like smoke. I was inexperienced, of course, and small framed. He tried to take me, his head turned away so I couldn’t see his face. Had he succeeded, he still would have died, but I would have learned a painfully unforgettable lesson that scarred me for life—we are not invulnerable.” Her eyes target mine, searching.

“Fortunately, he finally glanced down, and I spit in his face, saliva spraying across his eyes and nose. Maybe not so graceful as a kiss,” she says, looking to Azalea. “We can’t all be masters of seduction. But certainly, it was effective. He backhanded me before the poison could do its work, but it was the last hand he ever laid on a woman. I thought I’d never roll him off me.”

Her gaze drifts to a place we can’t see as she recalls the night in question. “When I found my way home, my mother took one look at her torn dress and began to cry. Not because she cared about the garment, or because she realized how close I’d come to being defiled, but because she knew I was saved. She’d been begging them for more time, you see. Some in our line had become convinced the gift had skipped me, especially when my sister, Laurel, was already showing the signs at fourteen. They weren’t sure it was wise to leave a woman in the world who knew our secrets but didn’t share their burden. I’ll never know how close I came to receiving the last kiss, but judging by my mother’s reaction, it was far closer than I ever realized.

“They found the man’s body that same night. In the news report, they called him an alleged rapist, having been accused by no less than four women. It’s hard enough to convict a man of sexual assault now, but it was even harder then. We can’t say how many women he actually harmed, or how many I spared, but what we can say is that my mother was right. All I needed was time.”

Her eyes twinkle behind the folds of skin that surround them, and her lips lift at the corners. “I’ve taken over a hundred marks since then, my last just this year.”

Her story lands like a winter squall, stinging the skin. The meaning is evident.

I audibly exhale, my bones falling away from each other.

“What are you proposing, Grandma Bella?” the one who Barbie signaled to be Lattie’s daughter asks, a woman of middle age with pale strawberry hair and a white, collared shirt.

“What I am proposing, Tina, is time. A trial period for Piers to show this clan if she can be trusted, if she has what it takes to be one of us, to kill swiftly and discreetly, without hesitation or misgiving.” She fixes me with a vulpine stare.

I should feel grateful for her endorsement, if it can be called that. Certainly, a knot somewhere inside me unwinds. But it is quickly replaced by the slow burn of registering what this means, what they want me to do. The man when I was five, Don, the man in the café—these are only the beginning. This will become my whole reason for existence if I give them what they want, the slaughter of who knows how many men. Men with parents and siblings. Men with wives. Men with children. This cycle of hunger, feeding, purging, killing will mark my days from now on, repeated over and over. It is not the life I imagined for myself when I dared to envision one apart from Henry.

“She can stay with me,” Aunt Myrtle offers before I can speak up for myself. “I can teach her. She’s already showing promise, all she needs is the education, something Lily was never able to give her. But I can. I wasn’t able to have a daughter of my own. Maybe this is why. Maybe this is my gift to the venery.”

“Myrtle Corbin, you have already given much to this clan,” Donna says from beside her mother’s wheelchair. “Your territory provides us with a place for these gatherings, a place for bane witches to escape when needed, to disappear. And you mind our stores, keeping valuable provisions from all our territories in your underground sanctuary for when they are needed most. You play a valued and important role in our family. Never forget it.”

I recognize the word “provisions” for what it truly is—poisons. The jars Myrtle had me hide. She dries and stores deadly plants on those shelves. Back stock, I suppose, for bane witches who need it in a pinch. Who knows how many ways there are to die down there?

Myrtle nods her appreciation for the elder woman’s words.

“A trial period makes sense,” I am surprised to hear Azalea of all people say. She scoots from her chair and waltzes over to Bella, scratching at the chicken’s head before turning to appraise me. “If she stays here, she can learn from one of the best, hone her skills in the privacy of this backwoods establishment, then claim a territory of her own, one we all agree on. The Midwest is short of our distinguished services right now. But how will we know she’s proven herself?” She winks in my direction.

Aunt Bella’s wrinkles deepen, furrows plowed with every shifting expression. “She will take a mark,” she declares. “Succinctly and without observation, bending herself to our edicts. Her performance will be graded on three points—accuracy, brevity, and confidentiality. The worth of her target. The precision of her delivery. And the stealth of her process.” She ticks each off on a crooked finger.

“And if she doesn’t succeed?” Rose asks.

Bella’s smile is oiled, the efficient glide of a ventriloquist’s dummy. It sets my teeth on edge. “Well, then the venery will get its last kiss after all.”

“There should be some kind of limit to this experiment, so it doesn’t drag out indefinitely,” Barbie insists.

“Six weeks should suffice.” The old woman scans the room, daring anyone to challenge her.

I see Myrtle’s face wash a ghastly pale shade, like curdled milk. “But… she just bloomed, just killed. It’s impossible to know when the cycle will—”

“Six weeks,” Bella reiterates, bringing a clawed hand down on the end of her armrest. “If she shares her mother’s precocious nature, that won’t be a problem.”

Rose snakes a hand down and squeezes Barbie’s shoulder. My nostrils flare against the heat building in the café.

Bella turns her gaze on Aunt Myrtle. “But if she doesn’t, Myrtle will call another conclave in order to see to her retirement. Won’t you, Myrtle?”

Her eyes find mine over a shoulder. They are soft, pitying. She turns to Aunt Bella, still stroking her mild-mannered hen. “You have my word.”

“And the cop,” Tina adds, her blouse so stiff it’s practically saluting.

The mention of Regis sends a spike of heat through my center, both passionate and protective. Surely, they can’t mean for me to kill him? I recall Myrtle’s statement that they don’t kill innocents and allow my muscles to slacken a little. Regis is a complication, but he’s an innocent one.

“She needs to take care of him. Get him off her scent or Myrtle will lose this territory we all prize so much,” she finishes to my relief.

White is not her color, I think snobbishly, the designer in me never far from the surface. It bleeds the warmth from her skin like a tick on a dog.

“Agreed,” Rose adds. “She will have to clean up this mess she’s made to be permitted a place in the venery.”

Bella’s eyes narrow into thoughtful slits. Her mouth forms a languid, crinkly smile. “I’ve no doubt that she won’t let us down.” Her eyes sharpen on Myrtle’s. “ Either of you.”

The room erupts into a chorus of exhales and sighs and sagging shoulders as the tension begins to dissipate. Several women rise from their chairs and shake Myrtle’s hand like she’s just won an important court case. Azalea turns to Barbie and begins discussing a hair mask she’s been applying to her split ends with some success. All around me, they are buzzing and stirring, ready to move on to the cocktails and refreshments now that the hard work is over.

I remain in my chair, baffled, a disgruntled energy building behind my sternum like a white-hot breastplate of rage. I have six weeks to learn everything it has taken these women twenty years or more to master; to find, stalk, and kill yet another man without leaving a trace, and to convince Sheriff Brooks that I had nothing to do with the one who collapsed in the café, that all is well in the tiny hamlet of Crow Lake, despite the two murderesses living under his nose. It seems designed for failure, a ploy of planned obsolescence. Rose, preposterous in those pink slacks, gloats in the corner with Barbie at her side, a winning smile painted across her doll-like features.

They are milling about as if I do not exist, as if I am not right here. A few begin to stack chairs while others wander toward the door. Scarlet is begging her mom for a crop top like Cousin Azalea’s. My own mother, the dead black sheep in a family of killers, got more airtime than me at this trial, which I have finally deduced is what a “conclave” actually is.

“Stop!” I screech, rising to my feet.

Around me, the room hushes. Everyone freezes and turns in my direction. Tongues still. Eyes widen. A few narrow with ire at my impudence.

Aunt Myrtle quickly steps over to me—more like between me and Great-Grandaunt Bella—placing a placating hand on my arm. “Piers, dear. It’s all settled. There’s no need to drag this out.”

But I shake her off, my eyes digging into the old matriarch’s. I will not be set aside, looked over in my own family as if I am some kind of apparition rather than a woman of flesh and blood, desire and aversion. I did that with Henry for the last two years and it nearly killed me. I will not do it again.

I glare at her, challenging, and find a note of admission, even respect, in hers.

Choking back doubts, I find my voice and use it. “I have something to say.”